Ovarian cancer treatment has advanced little over the last 40 years, and the disease leads to over 14,000 deaths annually in the USA. Autologous T cells expressing chimaeric antigen receptors (CARs) have had remarkable results in chemo-resistant haematological malignancies. But CAR therapies need specific targets, expressed only in the tumour cells and not in the healthy tissue. Until recently, follicle-stimulating hormone receptors (FSHRs) were thought to only be expressed in ovarian granulosa cells, but it is now known that FSHRs are expressed in 50–70% of ovarian carcinomas, making them an ideal therapeutic target.

Perales-Puchalt et al. generated human FSH chimaeric endocrine receptors (FSHCERs) and expressed them in T cells. These were shown to kill ovarian cancer (OVAR-3) target cells and FSHR⁺ CaOV3 ovarian cells in immunodeficient mice. Potential in vivo toxicity in healthy tissue due to unknown FSHR expression was analysed using a mouse FSHCER construct, which showed no obvious adverse effects.

This indicates that T cells redirected with FSHR-targeted chimaeric receptors could be a safe and effective treatment against aggressive ovarian malignancies.

Read the full article in Clinical Cancer Research doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-16-0492